School bus clampdown ‘divisive’
Rural Golden Bay families affected by a school bus clampdown say the move to kick kids off or pay is ‘‘discriminatory’’ and ‘‘unfair’’.
Golden Bay Coachlines has started enforcing Government rules in the small rural community in northwest Nelson.
Students who don’t meet transport zone criteria have to pay for their rides to school, and some are getting kicked off buses that are full.
Around 25 per cent of Golden Bay students have been affected by the changes which came into effect this year.
Their parents have to pay $400 a year for each child to keep catching the school bus if they don’t meet eligibility criteria.
But many families say the rules are unfair and they don’t go far enough to meet the needs of rural communities. One is taking the case to the ombudsman.
This month Tom McDonald’s two sons were kicked off the Onekaka school bus, which they have been catching twice a day for a year.
The regional transport advisor said his boys were ‘‘ineligible’’ for school bus funding to Golden Bay High School, because it was not the nearest school to their home. When the bus was full they could not ride.
The family live 14km from the school they attend in Takaka. The nearest school is 11km away in Collingwood.
Bus eligibility rules state that students must only access the bus when they are in the ‘‘zone’’ of their school.
However, they may make their own way, at their own cost, to a bus stop and access a different ministry-funded bus if they wish to attend a different school.
The McDonald boys’ grandmother had been driving them to the nearest bus stop, to meet the criteria. But McDonald said his children had been ‘‘singled out’’ and kicked off from one day to the next, while other children hadn’t.
‘‘It means you have to stop work at a certain time, you have to change your whole life and routine. It’s just a huge inconvenience and extra cost driving to town twice a day, and extremely unfair,’’ he said.
Kim Shannon, head of education infrastructure service, said the McDonald children had not been registered properly to use the service, so they could not be accommodated when the bus became full. However, as an interim measure it would provide an additional van for the route starting this week.
The move to enforce bus rules comes after Golden Bay Coachlines was allowing more and more ineligible children to ride the school bus. The company had tried to keep the new costs as low as possible, charging $1 per ride in a fixed contract of $400 a year for each child.
Last year, the Ministry of Education conducted an audit that focused on compliance of school bus companies with the new Health & Safety and Vulnerable Children Act legislations.
Following the audit, the majority of the companies met the requirements, but those that didn’t were forced to comply or risk losing their contract.
Deborah Rhodes is taking the case to the Ombudsmen.
Her children are not eligible for the ministry-funded bus that they had been catching for free for years. They live 1km from the zone boundary.
‘‘Essentially, what they have done is put a blanket rule across the nation, forcing bus companies to leave children at their gates if they are not far enough from school,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s that mentality of ‘you’re allowed and you’re not’.
‘‘It’s divisive and discriminatory beyond belief.’’